A tiny, black-clad figure with a scorchingly powerful voice who dominated stages around the world for almost 30 years, the legendary Edith Piaf still reigns supreme more than four decades after her death. In this powerful book, Piaf's amazing rags to riches to story is told with unprecedented detail, honesty, and compassion. Friends, composers, lovers, colleagues, and the father of Piaf's only child have contributed. Skillfully analyzing every aspect of this great artist's life, a vivid portrait is painted of the celebrated chanteuse whose triumphs and tragedies were shared by an adoring public. Illustrated with photographs from the author's collection and containing a complete discography, Piaf also features detailed appendices of her films, plays, and all stage and screen tributes, making this the most comprehensive and up-to-date biography available. Piaf is the ultimate tribute to the undisputed genius of a remarkable woman.
"Amazon USA is Janus, pure and simple. You get 5-stars reviews and tremendous praise...or you get 1-star reviews which are so poisonous (the July 2011 one for "Valentino", by Markus King being a prime example)that they defy belief. If someone leaves a 5-star review, you can guarantee that a poison review will pop up the next day. The homophobic Valentino female fans are the worst--easy to discern here, they cannot accept that he was gay, loathe anyone who suggests that he might have been, and have set up a hotbed of loathing against this author. There is of course a maxim to all of this: if Bret's books were SO bad, how come that he has been publishing for a quarter-century, and outselling ALL of his rivals?
Diary For 2011:
"Elizabeth Taylor: The Lady, The Lover, The Legend", April, to be followed by special foreign language mass-printings (Poland, Russia, Sweden, China, Japan), September-December.
"Freddie Mercury: Too Young, Too Soon", September.
Born in Paris in November 1954, Bret published his first biography, "The Piaf Legend", in 1988. His other bestsellers include biographies of Maria Callas, Mario Lanza, Gracie Fields, Elizabeth Taylor, Rudolph Valentino, George Formby, Rock Hudson, and around twenty more. His two biographies of Morrissey have sold in excess of 150,000 copies in the UK alone.
Bret loathes fan forums, another reason for the one-star reviews:
"They place their idols on pedestals, but they see the idols only as THEY want to see them, not as they really were. Really, I am SO flattered that they can devote so much time to attacking me, and it is such fun attacking them back--though of course they do not like having a taste of their own medicine!"
